And it heads far south too. A hard freeze warning has been issued for the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area:

And lest somebody say that this cold event isn’t significant, I’ll let the NWS do the talking here:

Longest Stretch of Cold Weather in 15 to 25 Years Possible This Week

…Longest Stretch of Much Below Normal Temperatures in 15 to 25 Years Possible…

Temperatures are expected to remain much below normal over all of south Florida this week, with the possibility of even colder temperatures this upcoming weekend. For detailed information on expected temperatures, please follow the indicated links for our textual and graphical forecasts. For freeze/wind chill watches and warnings, please check our hazards page.

It is not unheard of to have freezing or near-freezing temperatures in south Florida each winter. In fact, inland areas south and west of Lake Okeechobee experience freezing temperatures at least once a year on average. Over the metro and coastal areas of south Florida, freezing temperatures are less frequent, but even in these areas freezing temperatures have occurred about every 5 to 10 years on average. Temperatures drop to at least 35 about every 1 to 2 years in the Naples area, and about every 2 years in the outlying areas of southeast Florida. For the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade, At West Palm Beach, the average is about every 1 to 2 years.

What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region. However, our current weather pattern is what is referred to as a “blocking pattern”. This means that weather systems that typically move from west to east at fairly regular intervals are instead remaining in place for several days. A strong low pressure system over northern New England and eastern Canada is being “blocked” by a large high pressure system near Greenland. This in turn is creating a stationary high pressure system over the western U.S. and Canada. The result of this blocked flow is an uninterrupted and prolonged flow of air from the Arctic region of Canada southward over the eastern two-thirds of the country, including Florida.

Temperatures have dropped to below 50 degrees for three consecutive mornings over almost all of south Florida, with temperatures dropping to 45 or lower from Collier County east to Palm Beach County and points north. The latest forecast calls for lows to drop below 45 degrees over all of south Florida through Thursday morning. This would give 6 consecutive days of sub-50 and/or 45 degree-or-lower temperatures.

Following are the dates of the last time we had at least 6 consecutive days of low temperatures below 50 degrees in southeast Florida:

Miami and Fort Lauderdale: January 2001

Record is 13 days in Miami (January – February 1940) and 12 days in Fort Lauderdale in January 1956

West Palm Beach: January 2003

Record for West Palm Beach is 12 days set in December 2000-January 2001 and January 1956.

Following are the dates of the last time we had 6 consecutive days of low temperatures of 45 degrees or lower in Naples;

Naples: December 1989

Record for Naples is 8 days in January 1977.

Following are the dates of the last time we had 5 consecutive days of low temperatures of 40 degrees or lower in Moore Haven;

Moore Haven: January 24-28, 2001.

Record for Moore Haven is 9 days from December 31, 2000 to January 8, 2001.

Therefore, it’s been at least 7 years since we’ve had a prolonged stretch of temperatures in the 40s and 30s, with some areas going back as far as 21 years! Taking into account the daily average temperature, it’s possible that we’ll have up to 5 consecutive days of temperatures averaging at least 10-15 degrees below normal. For most of south Florida, the last time we had a stretch that cold was in 1995, with some areas going back to the mid to late 1980s.

I’m OK accepting that weather is not climate, if climate change activists will accept that human society changes, across generations.

Our children’s children may face climate change, but they will have already faced social and technical change.

As social change has been speeding up over the centuries and millennia, the social change experienced by those future generations will likely be much greater than anything climate change can throw at them.

There seems to be this image that our children’s children will be driving cars, commuting to work, consuming pizzas and buying large flat screen TVs.

We’re talking about 50 to 100 years (for climate) when society will be largely unrecognizable.

They say the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed yet. Well in 100 years, maybe 10% per cent of teenagers may be reaching levels of cognition that are seen in only a tiny tiny percentage of people today. They will see themselves in different ways. They will have different desires and needs. Their motivations will be different. And this will change society and the economy. Combine that with new technological possibilities, and the world is, quite simply, entirely unpredictable.

Sorry if someone has posted this, but I guess we are all officially “wacko’s” now on Wiki:

Wacko alert?

Recently posted off in Wottsup [25]:

I would invite all readers to help improving the climategate article on wikipedia, which has been hijacked by alarmists that have a troop of sleepless zealots that work in conjunction with the aim to keep the page as useless as possible. Please bear in mind the use of reliable sources and read and add your views in the discussion page before changing the main article. We need more people to counter W. Connolley and his troop of alarmists:

Probably worth mention at the Climate change probation page. Semi-protection is always an option. Guettarda (talk) 16:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
At the moment, SPAs don’t seem to be a huge problem. If it becomes one, I’m considering some sort of enhanced semi-protection (e.g. 100 edits, registered 3 months ago) I have no idea what the numbers would be at the moment. But right now there doesn’t seem to be a huge problem. Prodego talk 17:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The person who posted that comment to Wottsup is obviously a regular contributor to this Wikipedia topic, so it might not be a good idea to refer to them as a “wacko”. This is a clear case of meat puppetry though, and that should probably be addressed in some manner. — Scjessey (talk) 17:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I’ve tried to AGF and made a comment on William M. Connolley (talk • contribs) talk page, but what happens? I get attacked, ridiculed, and minimalized. My point was don’t use such words describing other people contributing to other web pages like wacko, Wottsup etc. Thanks! Nsaa (talk) 07:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry that you’re offended by a little levity about potential meatpuppets. As for Watts Up With That? (or wottsup? in common English as spoke in the sarf) this post from the Big Yin may inform you a bit more about the issue that was so sneakily hidden away here.

Please accept that going on about it is not a way of improving this particular article, and hence is inappropriate for this talk page which is governed by talk page guidelines. Hope that sets things to rest, do feel free to discuss it further on my talk page rather than cluttering up this article talk page. Thanks, dave souza, talk 08:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is indeed a very good sign that local weather is not global weather, not to say it has not much to do with climate. the global temperatures are much higher than last year and january started quite strong: might be going to set a new record (see channel 5 for tropospheric temps)http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

Yes, two hundred years after we in the UK abolished slavery, it has been reinvented in the form of Chinese slavery. Slaves are still slaves, even if they don’t have chains – zero pay, never ending work, no freedom to leave.

Meanwhile our adult population have no work to do, and sit at home consuming cheap products from – Wallmart.

This is most interesting, the prestigious Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, which develops one of the most serious climate models being used by IPCC, now claims “several cold winters” in the pipeline, but the climate crisis is not cancelled. Article is here, it is indeed worth reading for WUWT audience because this may be the new “explanations” they typically come up in the future…

Climate crisis is not cancelled. But now it may be a period of several cold winters than we have had in 1980 – and 90-century.
Published 04.01.2010 23:44

There is nothing in the way for more snow and colder winters in the next 10 to 20 years. This coincides with the global temperature increase, and is completely natural weather stations, according to climate scientist Erik W. Kolstad, Bjerknes Center in Bergen.

Natural

– The weather we are experiencing now is a result of natural variability, “says Kolstad.

But he does not cancel the climate crisis:

– When you look at the thermometer now indicates it may be five degrees below zero. But a hundred years ago, it would have been minus six degrees, “says Kolstad.

In average temperature on earth has risen by almost one degree since measurements began in 1870. But the parallel’s also the natural variations, and there are those who have given us the cold winter days in December and early January.

Stratosphere

The meteorological explanation for the cold we are experiencing now, is called “the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Since December we have had a negative NAO, which occurs when the strong winds that are common in the higher air layers, called the stratosphere, or braked sharply to a halt.

– We do not know why the NAO is changing, “says Kolstad. But we know that when we get a negative NAO, it leads, statistically, with a period of two months where the likelihood of cold periods increases. Kolstad We therefore believe that the winter will remain cool for one to two weeks, and it may well be that we get more cold periods in the near future.

Continued warming

– This has nothing to do with global warming to do. These are normal variations, “says Kolstad and refers to the story:

In 1950 -, 1960 – and to some extent the 1970s, it was common practice with even more prolonged periods of negative NAO, which provides cold on the ground. Then came the -80 and-90s where it was almost exclusively weather pattern with positive NAO.

– The main reason that we have had less snow in recent decades, compared with 50 – and 60-years, is that we have had fewer periods of negative NAO. But snowy winters will come back, “said Kolstad.

May be colder

– For all we know, we can now go into a 20-year period with more negative NAO in weather patterns. When we get more snow and winter, “says climate researcher.

Kolstad has done research on the relationship found between the currents in the North Atlantic Oscillation and cold periods. Now a researcher, he continued on to find the previsions of the stratospheric warming, so we can sign them before and understand them better.

At this time, not the researchers at the Bjerknes Center provide a clear answer on why they occur or when they occur.

– But we believe there are signs of this, we are looking only for relationships, “says climate researcher Erik W. Kolstad.

Parallel Climate Crisis

The global temperature increase, which takes place in parallel with the natural weather stations, have in the winter the greatest impact on those days where the temperature is around zero degrees, and they are quite a lot of here in the west. Then the one degree temperature increase in the average will be decisive for whether the precipitation falls as snow or rain and the snow that remains.

– The climate impact is greater in other parts of the world, where there also live many more people than in the northern hemisphere. There is one degree increase in temperature difference between dry or not dry, “says Kolstad.

Worse elsewhere

In Norway and Northern Europe will not be one-degree increase in temperature to destroy food production. Rather the opposite: earlier spring and later autumn gives farmers no longer growing season and larger crops.

-The consequences of global warming are no less important even if they happen in other parts of the world than our own, “says Kolstad.

This flow of “cold record” postings is now going on for a month of more. Also the whole of Europe is freezing cold since more than a month. And yet the global temperature is still 0,3°C higher than the average in the reference period. So what is the use of the contineous “cold record” news ? Trying to persuade people that global warming is not as bad as the “official warmist talk” try to make us believe ? Why is that bloody temperature then not dropping below the reference zero-anomaly ?

Rob Vermeulen (00:54:33) :“Yes, it is indeed a very good sign that local weather is not global weather, not to say it has not much to do with climate. the global temperatures are much higher than last year and january started quite strong: might be going to set a new record (see channel 5 for tropospheric temps)

Our climate is driven by deterministic chaos and it’s outputs are non-linear. This means that it is easy to “cherry pick” to find the trend you want to see. Here’s a quote from Dr. Roy Spencer which shows a differing view:-

“The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly fell back to the October level of +0.28 deg. C in December.

The tropics continue warm from El Nino conditions there, while the NH and SH extratropics anomalies cooled from last month. While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so.”

Whatever normally causes the high-latitude upper jetstreams to ‘wave’ or ‘meander’ (N-S sinusoidal oscillation), they are not doing it over Europe this winter. They are all running W-E along the Med, so there are no low pressure systems dragging warm air from the south west up over the UK.

You provided the link to the Guardian’s story about the tough go that Peruvian mountain people are having this winter, but you may have failed to notice that the article points the finger at global warming as the primary suspect possibly causing the “increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.”

I think that needs to be directed to your “weather is not climate” department for a pending WUWT post. There are other points in the article to elaborate upon: lack of citation; putting “changing weather” ahead of other problems like “lack of basic health services”; failure of Copenhagen cited as “death warrant for hundreds of thousands” (might be good to point out that anti-development treaties such as the draft text of Copenhagen would have IMO certainly helped to prolong and propagate poverty).

To put it in perspective, today something like 1.6 billion people have no electricity, 1 billion have inadequate water access, 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation, 2.5 billion use biomass to cook, etc. These are the things associated with the deaths of millions of people each year RIGHT NOW, most of them children. Could their eyes be further off the ball?

In case you do run with this story, I have some headline options for you:

Ireland, which normally has a very temperate climate (cold and damp in winter, warmer and slightly less damp in summer, but rarely snow or heatwaves), has been suffering from it’s longest cold spell in at least thirty years.
Investment tip. Long cereals and rice, short carbon futures.

OK, weather is not climate (WINC), but many a mickle makes a muckle (MAMMAM).

When will we see a tipping point in the state controlled media? Some might bet that reality will eventually penetrate to the alphabet networks, while others expect only the sound of silence.

Skeptics should try to recapture scientific societies such as the ACS or the APS. The Petition Project has collected more than 31K signatures, which means that there are troops waiting for a call to arms.

I live and work in Hampshire, England. Snow has fallen more or less continuously since last evening, and it lies on the ground more or less 40cm high. My boss, who’s lived in this area for over 30 years, said he’s never seen anything like it around here before.

Yes, “weather is not climate” etc, but it would be nice if The Independent and others would remember that the next time they attribute any heat wave, flood, etc to climate change (I know they’ll go on doing it).

Invariant: Isn’t it interesting how carelessly they claim that THIS is just natural variation, while the hot european summers of 2003 and 2006 were UNNATURAL?

Also, they do this while at the same time saying that they have no idea at all why the NAO changes! Well, what if they have no idea at all why Europe suddenly gets a scorching hot and dry summer either – be it in 1541, 1975 or 2003?

As a kid having grown up on Gilligan’s Island re runs I assumed Florida and the Bahamas were deeply tropical. Now I find out that they’re at a corresponding latitude to boring old Brisbane and can even get blasts of cold air, like Brisbane.
You Americans have some explaining to do with the Coconut cream pie propaganda you’ve been putting out there. ; )

BBC News Channel this morning. Rob Varley? Director of the Met Office (one of several I presume) was on to explain more about the “science” of what the UK is experiencing right now. He did nothing of the sort, droned on about varying amounts of snow spread around the UK, said it was unreasonable for local authorities to maintain vast amounts of snow clearing equipment, mentioned the Jet Stream, but again offered no explanation as to why & what causes the JS had moved south (which I was hoping to find out), presumably because he & his colleagues don’t have a clue as to why. He also glibly pointed out that this was just weather & nothing to do with global warming, (well of course it isn’t you twit, cold doesn’t equal warm in my books!) So basically he was on for barely 5 mins & said very little about the science of why the northern hemisphere is freezing its do-daas off! Only consolation was that the presenter did say to him that questions will be asked about all this cold weather! Gives them plenty of time to run the excuses thro’ Deep Thought ready for the thaw!

Question, is climate just weather patterns over a prolonged time period or what? Answers on a post card please.

Espen (02:08:48): Also, they do this while at the same time saying that they have no idea at all why the NAO changes! Well, what if they have no idea at all why Europe suddenly gets a scorching hot and dry summer either – be it in 1541, 1975 or 2003?

Agree completely. While I am usually very pessimistic regarding the ability of the climate models to do predictions, it’s not unlikely that a detailed study of 100 years of ARGO ocean data, may lead to useful models, in year 2100… You see, it seems from the excellent analysis of Loehle that ocean heat content varies continuously and slowly, not the terrible noisy curves of the atmosphere temperatures:

Next door indeed. That snow fall level would also apply to Clanfield too I’d imagine being only a few miles further south, and Cowplain, will have to talk to my Bro about that. I experienced some nasty snow drifts there in the mid-80’s. But Portsmouth was fridgid then, c1983, -40c with wind chill. Cold indeed has reappeared.

OT, but went for a short drive to the shops here, inner west, Sydney, Australia. For the first time this summer, it was cool enough not to use the air-con in the car.

But this cool is just weather. Yeah right!

Hi Pat !!!

BOM data indicates a top temp of 27.6C at 1.04pm. Temp at 9.45pm was 22.2C.

Temperature readings were Observatory Hill. The inner west is generally a bit warmer.

But it looks like you went for a drive at night. What did you expect 35C or something?”

Well, as you are in Melbourne, you are not privvy to Sydney’s inner west tempertures. It get’s, at least, 5c-7c hotter than at the “observatory” and usually more. Well, this is the first time in several years that I could go out at night, in summer, and not have the air-con on. It’s a big deal, really. As a migrant, from cooler climes, I am prone to notice more the hot to cool swings and the cool to hot swings. I also notice the lack of flies this year/Aus summer and noted by me last year/Aus summer. So, it is cool here in the inner west, Sydney, for a summer month of January.

This flow of “cold record” postings is now going on for a month of more. Also the whole of Europe is freezing cold since more than a month. And yet the global temperature is still 0,3°C higher than the average in the reference period. So what is the use of the contineous “cold record” news ? Trying to persuade people that global warming is not as bad as the “official warmist talk” try to make us believe ? Why is that bloody temperature then not dropping below the reference zero-anomaly ?

This graph shows the difference between the raw (real) temperature set and the published temperature set. It is not hard to have the global temperature is still 0,3°C higher than the average in the reference period. when you add 0.5°C to the actual temperature.

Here is the USA temperature with and without adjustments

Here is how Hansen changed the USA temperature graphs over time:

Here is Lucy’s graphs that puts our current climate temperature in perspective

In the climategate e-mails they talk of Mikes trick to hide the decline. Here are the graphs showing before and after Mile Mann hid the decline

“Why is that bloody temperature then not dropping below the reference zero-anomaly ?”

The answer is simple the temperature will NEVER drop below the reference zero-anomaly as long as people with a political agenda are in charge of the raw data and can manipulate it. That is why the FOIA were stone walled.

An Honest Politician is defined as one who stays bought, it looks like that is now the definition of a government scientist and journalists too.

Yesterday, on the same BBC news channel, the same Mr. Varley answered the interviewer’s question about people disbelieving global warming by saying that this was just the UK, not the world, and that, taking temperatures from all over the globe, things are still warming, that this is the warmest decade ever – “You’d better believe it” . As a Met Office man he must surely have known about the cold conditions in North America, Korea, China, the people digging a train out of a snowdrift in Mongolia, the 100 deaths from cold in Poland, the frozen Vistula river etc. so this certainly ain’t just the UK. They must be desperate if they have to resort to bare-faced lies to defend their position.

“Yes, it is indeed a very good sign that local weather is not global weather, not to say it has not much to do with climate. the global temperatures are much higher than last year and january started quite strong: might be going to set a new record (see channel 5 for tropospheric temps)”http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

Reply:
They use Wikipedia, a known propaganda site as a reference, therefore I assume this is sarcasm?

The hypothesis that this is ‘natural variation’ over-shadowing underlying rises in temperature is statistically testable.
If we take say 40yr+ records broken in the last 5 years for both min and max temp then the max temps should always outweigh the mins whatever the variability.
Lubos M did something like this but didn’t, I think, limit it to records from before the claimed warming.
I’m sure a re-analysis with all this extra data would give us “confidence” in the hypothesis. :D

As the human representative of the National Union of Terrified Snowmen, (NUTS), the snowmen I represent have been melting away in the past few years. The recent cold weather has increased the number of members, but it is a very fluid situation. Many members of the Met Office are honorary members, as they do stirling work fighting for our interests.

The Weather has thrown down the gauntlet.
The MSM can now have a field-day skewering the proponents of AGW.
They wouldn’t dare. ! ?? Oh, yes they would.
Have a can of Cream of Climate Change today. Sticks to your ribs, windshield, fingers, face, driveway, etc.
Cold enough for ya?
The best part of wakin’ up, is AGW in your cup. Energy sold separately.

In Sweden the current much colder than normal winter is called “Ice age winter” in media, same media that a few weeks ago said the earth was going “burn”.
Forecasts have been given the last week that local temperatures could drop down to -44C in Sweden. All time low in Januar is -49C in sweden I think.

Weather may not be climate but climate is weather.
Climate is basically average weather in a larger area.

The weather predictions have always been of big importance and talking weather a popular subject. No we have made the weather shamans and their predictions semi gods and loaded tons of money on the weather shamans’ altar to pay our tribute and they do deliver almost daily gruesome predictions of the future.

Someone of the weather shamans in the imminent cold predicted up to 30 years of cold weather but then global warming will kick in again and explode.

The fight to lower the temperature is still on and common people will be subdued with tax and policies so they will find it harder and harder to heat their homes despite maybe 30 years to come of freaking cold climate. How long will people accept this nonsense from the weather shamans?

We are having a terrible go at it in SWFL … We simply aren’t equipped with the proper blood for temperatures now in the 30s near everywhere. It’s 36 outside my window right now … sheesh, even polar brown bears would be happy, we are not.

But the message is not getting into parliament. I was watching Prime Minister’s Questions today (UK Westminster).

One opposition MP declared that warming trends were now declining (there was a blizzard going on outside). Cue a cacophony of jeering and cat-calling from the government benches, and a carping response from Gordon Brown – ‘Deniers!!’.

And yet this is the guy who wants to bring the whole nation to a halt with wind-power!

Food availability has been on the agenda for years, even before CAGW. If you dig deep enough you keep tripping over the same players for control of energy and control of food. Players like the UN, World Bank, Club of Rome, Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller.

Here is the history in brief, note that David Rockefeller, who is a co-founder of the secretive Bildeburg group (1954) has his sticky fingers into everything from the World Bank to the Council on Foreign relations to WWF and Greenpeace.

“The “Green Revolution,” the worldwide transformation of agriculture that led to significant increases in agricultural production from 1940 through the 1960s… [was] funded by a consortium of donors led by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. [goal: sale of Ag Equipment, Ag chemicals and bank loans]

“This group, called the Committee for Economic Development, was officially established in 1942 as a sister organization to the Council on Foreign Relations…Composed of chief executive officers and chairmen from the federal reserve, the banking industry, private equity firms, insurance companies, railroads, information technology firms, publishing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the oil and automotive industries, meat packing companies, retailers and assisted by university economists “representatives from every sector of the economy with the key exception of farmers themselves ” CED determined that the problem with American agriculture was that there were too many farmers. But the CED had a “solution”: millions of farmers would just have to be eliminated. “http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html

Next on the scene is the World Bank and IMF with their SAPs“Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans…. SAPs often result in deep cuts in programmes like education, health and social care, and the removal of subsidies designed to control the price of basics such as food and milk. So SAPs hurt the poor most, because they depend heavily on these services and subsidies.

SAPs encourage countries to focus on the production and export of primary commodities such as cocoa and coffee to earn foreign exchange. But these commodities have notoriously erratic prices…

In the dozens of countries where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), the people who have seen deterioration in their standards of living, reduced access to public services, devastated environments, and plummeting employment prospects… “ http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html

The final step is the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture and other treaties such as NAFTA. Immediately apparent were the open border policies that allowed Transnational Corporations to bankrupt subsistence farmers in third world countries in various ways (see References) The second and more complete method used to get rid of independent farmer competition, is through the “harmonization” of national laws with the World Trade Organization/FAO/OIE “recommendations” such as the Guide to Good Farming Practices.

Farmers and gardeners will no longer be allowed the freedom to grow food without dealing with very burdensome regulations, paperwork and fines. Already in Portugal 60% of the farmers have left the land. In 2009 the US Congress introduced six different bills designed to implement “harmonization” with WTO’s burdensome regulations. Once these regulations are in place in first world countries, along with Cap and Trade and similar laws, the control of our energy and food supplies will be complete. Remember once an original bill is passed it is very easy to modify the bill until it does exactly what the transnationals want. The history of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act is a fine example of the method used.

2002 – Effect of policies on farmers in USA and Mexico: In Mexico, the price farmers receive for corn has plummeted 45 percent At least 1.5 million farmers have left their land… between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000 http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/ftaa/topten.html

I love this quote from the news link above titled “Peru’s mountain people face extinction because of cold conditions:

“In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.”

There you have it. More evidence that global warming is so disruptive that it is even responsible for global cooling! The planet has gotten so warm that it’s now cold!

It’s simple really: it’s colder because it’s warmer; and all this cold will make it warmer which will make it colder because it’s warming. Even though it feels cold, it’s really not as cold as it feels because it’s warmer due to getting colder from the warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. So stop driving your SUV and turn down the thermostat in your home – it’s making it colder.

If monthly and annual averages of temperature and precipitation are the base data of climate history, then weather X 30 (and X 365) *IS* climate. No need to apologize for publicizing extreme c-c-c-c-cold events.

“What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
——-

I really like your site, but I wouldn’t flag up too many UK media stories ‘predicting worst storm in 50 years’ if I were you. I’d wait until they occur.

We in the UK are used to media hype exposed as media bullshit. Particularly as most media tyros are softies from the South East of the country.

The storm right now is a significant one for SOUTHERN Britain, but fairly inconsequential compared to a real Scottish freak occurrence. There was a January storm in the mid 1980s which buried trains in rural Scotland, so much so that the hotel nearby (Bridge of Orchy hotel) still has pictures of that time on their walls.

This one is a foot or so, hardly earth shattering.

Just a reminder that at sunspot minimum in one half of the Hale cycle, we’re more likely to experience ‘continental’ weather for a few weeks……….

Alexander Feht: “au contraire”, this site supports exactly what I’m saying. On channel 5 (the one used for tropospheric temps by UAH) anomaly of the day is 0.82 F higher than last year. Except for 2007, it is the highest value displayed here. Moreover, december was the 5th or 6th hottest.

Tenuc: are you not wondering why Spencer suddenly switched from a 13-month running anomaly to a 25 one just before making this statement? I do not agree that I’m doing cherry-picking when stating that the actual global temps are close to the records – that is simply a fact. Cherry picking would be to choose to compare actual temperatures with those seen during the strongest el nino ever recorded in more than a century. That was, let me think, 11 years ago?

Gael Combs: wikipedia is not the devil. Moreover, Roy Spencer who’s taking care of UAH is a good scientist, and he’s even some sort of a “skeptic hero” in a way… i can’t see why we could not trust his data…

A very interesting paper (peer reviwed)http://tinyurl.com/cz8gkg
The science is “settled” – I don’t think so!
”
Oh come on, nothing against Gerlich, but could people who post a link to Gerlich’s paper please say so. I find myself waiting for a big PDF download again and again. Just write the word Gerlich above your tinyurl…

Re investment tips: go long on tourism. People will pay any price to escape the cold. My take.

Here in Preston County, WV there is three feet of snow on the ground and it’s still coming down. Forecast for snow pretty much every day through next week. I don’t remember anything like this since 1993. Global warming indeed.

I do feel sorry for florida. But I’m in Missouri and If you look Missouri and Iowa have more than their share of Record lows. I feel so lucky.
Cattle-Fax reported last week that cattle in feedlots that received the heavy snows 10-14 day ago are gaining weight much slower. Cattle in areas like Nebraska and Kansas will be fed longer or slaughtered at lighter weights. This means the guy feeding cattle makes less money and pays less for cattle to be fed the next round so cow-calf producers like me the guy who raised calves to be sold to the fedlots makes less.
OH well I’m out the door in my thermal linned Carrharts and glad I’m not I North Dakota.

Very old news. Much reviewed, and often reviled, all over the blogosphere. But not “peer reviewed” in the usual sense of the term. Not commenting on the merits, myself, just pointing out that it is not new.

“What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
——-

Shouldn’t that be “blow warmer Gulf Air across the region”?

No, sounds right to me. The Gulf is west of FL, so winds off the Gulf would be westerly. Maritime air is always warmer than continental air masses, especially polar ones. So whether the air came in from the east or west, if if came in off the ocean it would have a warming effect. I’m not familiar with the climate of FL, but it just sounds like that they are saying that there are normally easterly winds that moderate FL’s climate. I.e., easterly, as in “from the east,” which would mean the Atlantic, not the Gulf.

Background: Stripped to its fundamentals, the climate is first affected by the long-term balance between (1) the solar irradiance absorbed by the Earth, ocean, atmosphere system, and (2) the infrared (IR) radiation exchanged within that system and emitted to space. Thus, key observations include the solar irradiance, incident and reflected, and the spectrally resolved IR radiance emitted to space that carries the spectral signature of IR forcing of climate and the resulting response of that climate system. As a key part of the recognized imperative to develop long-term, high accuracy time series with global coverage of critical climate variables, this mission addresses the objective of establishing global, long-term climate records that are of high accuracy and tied to international standards maintained in the U.S. by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In addition, it is essential for societal objectives that require the long-term climate record, that the accuracy of the core benchmark observations be verified against absolute standards on-orbit by fundamentally independent methods.

You will note that they allude to the low accuracy, non-traceability, and data fudging of current surface data. And since planning started a while ago I think they must have known something well before ClimateGate.

The prevailing winds across most of the east coast of Florida are out of the southeast. You could sort of think of it as Gulf air since the gulf stream squeezes up between Miami and the Bahamas and runs north along the coast.

Today the winds are out of the north and west and it’s COLD. 26degrees in Cocoa, FL this morning. When I cool the house in the summer, if it’s 90 outside and I cool it to 75 inside, that’s a 15 degree difference. This morning my poor heater was trying to get it to stay at 65. With it below 30 outside that more than a 30 degree difference. My house was not designed for that. Note to self: More insulation! I set it at 60 this morning so the cat will be cold all day :-)

One thing I can’t quite wrap my brain around is how it there a high temp record in the middle of all the snowfall records in Idaho?

The “record high” (it wasn’t really a record, it was a tie) in Idaho was for Pierce, Idaho. Pierce is a tiny, isolated, mountain town not far from where I live (Pullman, WA). We were under an inversion at the time, so perhaps that contributed to the temp difference? I agree that it is very strange, though.

The first two weeks in December, the National Weather Service was reporting temps for my town at twenty degrees above actual. They were reporting temps in the almost constant 42- 44F range while the snow in the street was not melting and new snow was falling. My home thermometer was reading 20-22F and the official recorded temps around us were also in the 20-25F range. I checked the NWS site yesterday and there has been no adjustment. Our official December 2009 record still incorrectly shows my town as experiencing above normal temps for the first two weeks in December.

I know that there have been records set but I know that some of them are erroneous. I live in Indiana and some of the snow fall records (Lafayette, IN 1.2″ 12/31/2009 previous 0″ 2008) are off (we had a pretty big snow fall in 2007 of 17″). Maybe some of these are new stations that haven’t had previous years of data to compare to. Look at Grand Haven WWTP in Michigan, 0.5″ Jan 03 2010, 0″ 2009. Can someone take a look at why some of these are records when we know that Michigan, especially Grand Haven gets lake effect snow quite often?

“Rob Vermeulen (05:49:37) :
[…]
Moreover, december was the 5th or 6th hottest.”

If that is what science says, they must all be deluded.
I won’t go into any details here. Fudge up past records any way you like, but if you prefer to believe that, dear Rob, you’re deluded as well. Just ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away.

“the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade,”

Maybe on average but I don’t think that average has held up at all over the last 10 years. It was so cold this morning here in the suburbs of Ft Lauderdale. 32 with 6mph winds. That is quite painful for south Floridians.

The forecast is for 32 again tonight and this weekend as well. WOAH! If we don’t stop this GW we’re all going to freeze to death. Al. . .Al . . . please help us!

Dusty (05:46:11) : replying to: “What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
says:
Shouldn’t that be “blow warmer Gulf Air across the region”?

Dusty, it works both ways and depends totally on the wind direction. Normally in winter the icy arctic blasts come out of the midwest from a NW direction allowing the warmer Gulf to keep the temperature along the west coast reasonable. Winds coming out of the E and SE pass over warmer waters and warm up the whole state because they are not arctic in nature. But when arctic air comes in directly from the N or NE, as it is now, it does not pass over warmer waters and stays cold.

That Daily Express front page was first for review on Sky news last night. The reviewers were a particularly childish political commentator from the left and a vacuous Tory MP. Between them they rubbished the headline on the basis that ” it’s not AGW it’s Climate Change. CC means just that – it gets hot and it gets cold, stupid! We can expect more severe winters from time to time! ”
It was quite obvious from their in depth and meaningful analysis of the subject that their comprehension of the subject came from small talk on the dinner party circuit of their respective intimates rather than the slightest part of any research that they might have conducted for themselves.
The problem we have in the UK is that in a few months we have to vote for one or other of the parties that these idiots represent.
Meanwhile, in the real world, as the snow lies deeper by the day over more and more of the UK, Gloucestershire County Council have called on all private 4×4 owners to come forward and volunteer their services to reach and assist the elderly and social services clients that are threatened by the worsening conditions. What price the green electric town car now then? And will we get back the extra road tax inposed on suvs?
So little salt was stockpiled that it is already running out despite the fact that only the main routes have been salted since day one over two weeks ago. We have main roads running but desperate or undriveable conditions on the routes that feed them!
Pavements are unsalted and broken bones are a growth industry in our hospitals!
Windmills blight our landscape, yet in the coldest of conditions produce no power. This year we will pay a hidden levy on our domestic power bills of 10% to subsidise these anachronistic excrescences, which unlike their predecessors, will not become quaint bijoux properties when no longer required!
Greens have no brains and they ARE dangerous!! Fact.

Warm spots in Maine are due to a huge blizzard which formed east of Cape Cod and then did a loop-de-loop over Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine. Pressure fell to 960-965 mb at center. Didn’t get much media coverage because the heavy snow didn’t hit big cities. Relatively mild maritime air was swept around the top, and it was actually seven degrees warmer in Augusta Maine than it was 1500 miles south in Augusta Georgia. This wave of maritime air over the top can be seen effecting areas as far west as Lake Huron, in satellite animations.

I could feel the milder air in Southern New Hampshire, though it stayed below freezing. 29F feels much warmer than 15F. However the wind from this storm was very impressive. I cleared away snow on Saturday, and the drifting was so bad there was no sign of my work on Sunday morning, though we’d only had another additional 3 inches.

This is the third huge storm to effect the USA in 3 weeks. I’d like to see a study about how much heat is consumed by such storms. Warm, moist air is hoisted high into the atmosphere, where latent heat is released both by water vapor turning into liquid, and by liquid turning into snowflakes. I imagine a lot of this heat is then lost into outer space. Anyone seen papers discussing this?

I read a blurb by Hansen where he stated that Global Warming was “masked” by the consumption of heat in the process of ice turning into liquid. (Melting ice-caps, and so forth.) It would seem that the process must work both ways. Therefore the process of Global Cooling should be “masked” by the process of liquid turning into ice.

Therefore I imagine these huge storms balance out the El Nino’s added heat in at least three ways:

1.) Large amounts of heat are brought up to the upper atmosphere, where latent heat is released, as water turns from liquid to solid, and this heat is lost to outer space.

2.) The solidified water then falls as snow, which creates a brilliant white surface which reflects solar heating, and enhances radiational cooling.

3.) When the snow-cover melts, it absorbs much available heat (which becomes “latent heat” that is released in the next cycle.)

FAIRBANKS – In what might become an annual tradition, an ice sculpture of former Vice President Al Gore has taken its place in front of Thrifty Liquor along Airport Way.

The two-ton “Frozen Gore” sculpture isn’t exactly a tribute. It’s a tongue-in-cheek critique of Gore’s vocal belief in man-made climate change, complete with hot air pouring out of his mouth.

Local businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora contracted the piece from award-winning sculptor Steve Dean and say they’ll keep erecting one each winter until Gore accepts an invitation to discuss the global warming issue in Fairbanks.

This year’s version includes special effects, thanks to a system that pipes the exhaust from a Ford F-350 out of Gore’s open mouth. Compeau will fire up the truck periodically this winter to create the “hot air” effect.

Of course these online polls are quite useless except perhaps to jolt or embarrass the media or for computer geeks and zealots to gang up similarly to the science museum or the Noble Peace Prize, but had Real-Climate won for Best Religious Blog that would have been soooo yummy it would just have to have been fattening. That would truly be a guilty pleasure.

– The climate impact is greater in other parts of the world, where there also live many more people than in the northern hemisphere. Der er én grads temperaturøkning forskjellen mellom tørke eller ikke tørke, sier Kolstad. There is one degree increase in temperature difference between dry or not dry, “says Kolstad.

This pony has gone around the ring a few times. I heard it in 1974 or 1975 in a different, and more ridiculous context.

I’d like these fellows to give an example or two of places where this occurs. Also, they have to make a case that the dryness comes from the temperature change, and not from a third factor that causes both the temperature change and the dryness.

Maybe it is because I am just a tad shy of 60 years old, but I can’t bring myself to fall completely for anything that someone as young as Messr. Kolstad says. Is that ageism on my part? Is that a bad thing?

I was in ninth grade Catholic high school when it snowed, in Miami, at about 9:00am, 1977. It dissipated when it hit the ground, but it was still snow. Good times…”

I live in Pinellas County near Tampa. Pinellas is a peninsula and has moderated temperatures, high and low, because of the ocean water surrounding more than 75% of its perimeter. That said, I took pictures of frost in our yard this morning. The forecast for Saturday/Sunday is rain, high winds and a low of 28 F. That tells me to have the video camera ready to record the first measurable snowfall in the Tampa area since January 19, 1977.

I purchased a new Ford Fusion in the spring of 2009. I wanted to help out a little by reducing my fuel consumption and the failing economy.
The Ford design engineers must have consulted the MET office for future climate conditions and decided to factory install engine block heaters on them. I’m really glad they did because I live in Missouri and currently there is 10 inches of global warming on the ground, 6 more on the way and an overnight heat wave of -13F with windblown heat around -30F.
Nothing new here with this current weather cycle. I’ve skated on a pond in March and mowed the lawn in December. I guess I just dated myself
Seriously a folks, what the governments are doing is taking control of world energy supplies’ KNOWING that years of cold weather are in the future. It’s all about the tax $$$$$$$’s and that one world order thing.
Tim

Gael Combs: wikipedia is not the devil. Moreover, Roy Spencer who’s taking care of UAH is a good scientist, and he’s even some sort of a “skeptic hero” in a way… i can’t see why we could not trust his data…”

Wikipedia is known for its “edit wars” on any subject touching climate therefore it is a VERY poor choice as a reference since Dr. Spencer can not be assured the information he referenced has not been changed to something else.

As far as the Satellite temperature data is concerned I am neutral.

However in my location, comparing 1994 (satellite minus 0.1 C) to this year (satellite +.28 C) I had a cool spring, mild summer, rainy cool fall and frigid winter. The high temperatures were at least 4F degrees cooler than the normal 98F seen frequently in May, June, July and August – that is the top temp this year was 94F for the spring and summer months. On top of that we have the CRU e-mail complaining there has been no warming and graphs here showing either no warming or cooling for the decade.

At this point I do not believe any of it. I do not think we can actually measure what we think we are measuring to the precision we think we are measuring it. A typical problem in science. Was it cooler in the seventies? yes has it warmed since then? yes Will it continue to warm? I very much doubt it and I think despite what the satellite temperature data is showing this year we are starting into a cooling trend.

My biggest problem is the precision. I do not think minus 0.1 C is actually different than +0.28 C

The money paragraph:
However, it is not cold everywhere in the world. North-east America, Canada, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and south-west Asia have all seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5 °C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10 °C

“I know that there have been records set but I know that some of them are erroneous. I live in Indiana and some of the snow fall records (Lafayette, IN 1.2″ 12/31/2009 previous 0″ 2008) are off (we had a pretty big snow fall in 2007 of 17″). Maybe some of these are new stations that haven’t had previous years of data to compare to. Look at Grand Haven WWTP in Michigan, 0.5″ Jan 03 2010, 0″ 2009. Can someone take a look at why some of these are records when we know that Michigan, especially Grand Haven gets lake effect snow quite often?”

There is a rumor that an elite group of skeptics, disguised as polar bears, have infiltrated many of the reporting stations and are artificially manipulating weather reports. RealClimate has been alerted and are investigating claims from various sources that a “watsup” blog may be responsible for the group’s organization and direction.

A few days ago I moaned that whilst it had been cold in Gloucestershire, England, we had only had sprinklings of snow. Hooray – yesterday and today we have put on 8 inches (20 cm), a bit deeper than last February, and I think the deepest since 1982. Can’t compete with the 40cm mentioned for Hampshire in an earlier comment.

Is it possible for global cooling to commence, via an influx of colder temperatures north of 45N, while the tropics still keep the “anomaly budget” slightly positive? It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when El Nino turns to La Nina – then we might really see some global averages looking more like the eighties than the noughties.

slowjoe … thanks for the UK Met quote: However, it is not cold everywhere in the world. North-east America, Canada, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and south-west Asia have all seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5 °C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10 °C. It is laughable.

As you know, this is utter nonsense when taken at face value. For Canada, a strict interpretation is Canada [has] seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5 °C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10 °C. Naturally, in a country that is a large as Canada it would be unusual for portions to NOT be above normal … that is just they way weather is over a large area. But, as you know, to imply that Canada has been warm is nonsense.

Where I live in southern Alberta, the month of December was 8C° below the long term average for December…not just a day or two, but the average for the month. “Cold” news reports have been the norm for a lot of the country over the past few weeks.

Hey buddies!, why don’t you get Al Baby, undress it and make him walk a few 10 miles naked, asking him all the time if he still believes the world is warming?
In order to not being so sadic you can afterwards cover him up with a beautiful tar and feathers garment.☺

Clicking on the map for “source data” you may find “The Record Events map depicts the official National Weather Service records recorded for the defined date(s) or time period, which includes record high and low temperatures, record high minimum temperatures, record low maximum temperatures, record daily rainfall and record daily snowfall.”

In Tampa FL, (inland from Tampa, not at the bay or coast), we look to have 3 days in a row of lows in the high 20s (including tonight), a brief break on Thursday, and then continued high 20s/low 30s through the weekend. Starting on 2-January-2010, our low has been in the 20s and 30s every day.

As the article stated, it is not unusual to have high 20s once or twice in a season, but the unusual part about this weather is the length. Typically, these type of weather events last one or two days, followed by a rapid warm up. This weather though looks like it will have lows in the 30s and 20s for at least 7 out of 8 days.

I have lived here on and off since 1971, and I do not recall any cold weather event lasting this long and being this durable. I remember the 1977 snow fall, and that was the only time I saw icicles in Florida. Yes, it’s been colder here, but the duration is highly unusual, if not totally unique.

Even if many may have been in good faith, quite a few must have spoken against better knowledge, and some (the core) have deliberately manipulated, changed, left out or simply eliminated data. Time, room and need for legal consequences.

Gail: this will be easy to check. Models predicted 2009 would be a top-10 hot year, but not a record one. I remember a lot of people on this site welcoming this claim with a lot of sarcasm, especially after the relatively moderate 2008. 2009 revealed to be the 5th hottest or so, finally…
Same models predict 2010 to be 1st or 2nd hottest with a high probability. So let’s wait for a few months.

Rob Vermeulen (00:54:33) :
“Yes, it is indeed a very good sign that local weather is not global weather, not to say it has not much to do with climate. the global temperatures are much higher than last year and january started quite strong: might be going to set a new record (see channel 5 for tropospheric temps)http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/”

Rob, the warm anomaly is primarily attributed to the moderate El Nino event. That North America, Europe and Asia are all suffering well below normal (and frequently record setting) temperatures, and the satellite anomaly still shows that high of a temperature divergence, makes me worry about what happens when the El Nino dissipates (which it appears to be starting to do). The warmth in the satellite record is driven primarily by the Tropics, and will drop once El Nino goes away.

But in case you missed it, here are some links to mostly MSM articles chronicling the cold experienced by three continents:

And despite these record low northern hemisphere temps the Arctic ice extent according to IJIS has fallen to the lowest levels compared to recent years. Starting 2010 below all other recorded extents.

Uh huh. And how much of the continental areas are snow-covered and frozen? Persistent southerly flow in the Labrador strait keeps the ice at bay, and maybe this is so too in the Bering sector–no doubt there is some anticorrelation between continental temperatures and polar ice. I notice IJIS graph has 2010 so far at the low range but right on top of about 4 other years.

Today I drove several times from home to school and back again, and noticed the campus was 6F at all times, but home (in the country) was 1-2F. There was no “sky view effect” here as the sky was solid gray ith light snow. No, this difference is due to the heated buildings all over campus. There are people who seem to think UHI is all about the sky view at night, but it really seems more complex than that.

Okay, I have a silly question. The setup: The earth is hit by an almost constant energy flux from the sun. So for decades I believed (with anecdotal evidence, with perhaps some bias built-in) that in winter the weight of cold air at the pole would just spill out and flow down somewhere in the world. When that happened warm air would flow up someplace else. But this year it appears that the cold is flowing down across the entire NH. So my question is: where did the heat go? Is it warmer in the tropics or SH?

The weather service keeps updating their forecast for the Denver Metro area. It was supposed to start snowing today mostly after 11:00 am with a low in the +single digits F, then it was just below zero, now last time I checked they are calling for -5 deg F for tonight’s low. It looks like this cold air mass is backing into the mountains more than they expected.

This has been a trend I have been noticing for some time now, that the forecasts have more often than not, seemed to be consistently too warm (by several degrees) and cold and snow events seem to usually be a bit later than expected in early forecasts.

For example, in the 7 day outlook they will call for an event to happen on Friday, but by Wed, they have pushed it back to late Saturday or into Sunday. Then by the weekend it actually happens late Sunday or Monday morning.

At least that is my recollection recently.

Have others noticed any trend in local forecasts for the weather events to be progressing a bit slower than anticipated and lasting longer than expected with cooler temps than originally forecast?

Models predicted 2009 would be a top-10 hot year, but not a record one. I remember a lot of people on this site welcoming this claim with a lot of sarcasm, especially after the relatively moderate 2008. 2009 revealed to be the 5th hottest or so, finally…
Same models predict 2010 to be 1st or 2nd hottest with a high probability. So let’s wait for a few months.

The odds at Intrade.com on 2010 being the 1st hottest year are 25 to 75.

How’s this for a theory (?): It’s a seasonal thing… summers are for global warming; winters are for predictions of the next summer drought. This way, they can keep the drumbeat going without skipping a beat.

“Today, after the analysis, the NWS forecaster essentially “draws” the forecast and a computer takes his/her input to create the local forecast you currently see on the web. Since the information is drawn over an area, the computer can interpolate between values. For example, if the forecaster draws a temperature line of 60°F at the north end and a 70°F line at the south end of his/her area of responsibility, the computer will interpolate the remaining values (61-69°F) over the region between the two lines.”http://www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/webweather/pinpoint_max.htm

I meant to add: we’re getting dumped on in the Denver metro area, about a foot above average. I know it’s different on the front range, and I haven’t been up to the hills this year, but I might question the 86% figure out of sheer disrespect for authority.

“What’s remarkable about this year is how persistent it’s been. We haven’t really set many records, but it hasn’t been warm at all,” Matt Kelsch said.

Kelsch is a precipitation expert-a hydrometeorologist-at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He says Boulder has had twice as much snow as usual so far this winter. In Denver, we’re a foot above average. The cause is El Nino: warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that affect weather patterns around the world.

“If this is a typical El Nino year we should expect a dryer period mid-winter, January and February,” Kelsch said.

Ron Dean: how do you explain then that a moderate el nino, together with the weakest sun in a century, leads to records of global temperature? My take is that 2010 will be the hottest, or very close to the hottest year. Time will tell.

The big freeze continues, but the sky is clearish this morning. We may get another 5 – 15cm by Sunday night, but we’ll all get along fine.

Any ice climbers out there, conditions in Scotland are awesome. Low routes which come into condition once a decade or less are frozen and it’s like an Arctic winter wonderland, cold and sunny up there now.

Current projections are that this winter will quite likely be in the coldest 10 since 1900. The mild start to December will likely stop it being in the coldest 3. Lows around -20C expected at the w/e in Scotland, which is still around 7C warmer than the record low in 1981/2.

Winds are steady betwen E to N, with most coming off the NE.

The wisdom of accurate pre-season forecasts to justify stocking up on grit may be learned this year – the firm which mines the Salt is working 24/7 but can’t satisfy all demand.

Basis for an underwriting scheme to justify supplier ramp-up in the autumn if this happens again?

Thanks for the comments. Sorry I didn’t respond before now. Anyway, I guess I should have taken the “typically” to mean on the average over a broader period of time and that my observations of the GOES-East satellite views over the last year and a half don’t reflect the typical or alternatively, I misunderstand what the views are showing.

GOES-East has been showing a pretty consistent pattern of an air stream originating(?) in the Pacific and flowing east across Central America through the Gulf finally following +/_ the pattern of the Gulf Stream. That pattern, and it’s run since at least the first part of last year, of staying much to the south and interrupting the countervailing westerly stream that comes out of the west coast of Africa, is what caused my questioning of the comment in the report that “Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”

Right now the NW’erly is again forcing this stream south and nearly off the southern tip of FL. In addition, I don’t see the possibility of this pattern as changing in any significant manner such that Atlantic air will break the cold snap, but I do see the ‘Gulf Air Stream’ (for lack of the knowing the correct term) either forcing the NW’erly back north or the “strong Low pressure system” in the story, moving on with everything else allowed to shift.

Either/or, though, it seems to me the relief from the cold snap will be the result of warmer air of that Gulf pattern, and not the warm Atlantic air.

Again, what I see on GOES-East maybe be different than what the story talks about. So, I’d ask, is that GOES-East pattern a higher level atmospheric pattern which is different from a lower level pattern flowing from a different direction?

Gail: this will be easy to check. Models predicted 2009 would be a top-10 hot year, but not a record one. I remember a lot of people on this site welcoming this claim with a lot of sarcasm, especially after the relatively moderate 2008. 2009 revealed to be the 5th hottest or so, finally…
Same models predict 2010 to be 1st or 2nd hottest with a high probability. So let’s wait for a few months.

With all due respect, what do any of these rankings mean when we have so much doubt about raw data and those pesky adjustments? Record year or top ten ranking means nothing when the record got made through adjustment. It’s a lot like figure skating championships with highly politicized judges–not very satisfying.

Good time to remember Shakespeare writing from the heart of the little ice age.
(“ways be foul” means something like “the roads are a mess”)

WINTER
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

How’s this for a theory (?): It’s a seasonal thing… summers are for global warming; winters are for predictions of the next summer drought. This way, they can keep the drumbeat going without skipping a beat.

Stay warm.

When I worked for Colorado Office of Emergency Management I learned that those snow survey results need to be viewed with considerable caution due to their variability. They can read out as 86% of normal (for the date!), and tomorrow they could be 150% of normal for the date.

In short this early in the snow year they don’t mean much since the vast majority of Colorado’s snow pack arrives in the spring months, unless we have an unusually wet fall. January is typically one of our driest months for total precipitation. It very much depends on where the moisture is coming from. If the moisture is coming from the west (salt lake area) then the west face of the northern mountains get dumped on. If it is coming out of the south west (4 corners area and south) then Wolf creek, Silverton and Ouray get buried. If it is coming from the south east (upslope from the gulf then the front range gets hammered. If the low circulation sets up in the Oklahoma panhandle or slightly south the snow falls south of the palmer divide. If the low circulation sets up just a little north of Springfield and south of Lamar, then the Denver basin and the Platte river basin gets dumped on.

I would not worry much about the water/snow levels until late Feb and into March. Those late season heavy wet snows can totally turn the forecast numbers around in a single day/storm.

When I worked for Colorado Office of Emergency Management I learned that those snow survey results need to be viewed with considerable caution due to their variability. They can read out as 86% of normal (for the date!), and tomorrow they could be 150% of normal for the date… I would not worry much about the water/snow levels until late Feb and into March. Those late season heavy wet snows can totally turn the forecast numbers around in a single day/storm.

It’s still a question (at least in my mind) what Mike Gillespie of the Natural Resources Conservation Service snow survey has in mind when he reports:

The accumulation is the lowest statewide since 2003, when the number hit 85 percent of average, according to Mike Gillespie

As noted above, Denver and Boulder got a nice dump of snow – a foot above the average for this period.

One thing I would suggest (carefully)… there are some big dollars at stake. I don’t know which agencies have skin in the game, but I’d guess when Natural Resources Conservation Service reports surplusses, Colorado has little choice but to deliver downstream in a big way. Gillespie is reporting dearth in every major watershed, especially in the Yampa / White (74%) and Upper Colorado River Basins (81%).

A Google of “Water Use Suits vs. Colorado” brings up tens of thousands of interesting reasons why NRCS might tend to under- rather than over-report our current snowpack. Farmers, ranchers, Indian tribes, Kansans, Californians, river conservationists, white water rafters… all have a stake.

One thing is for sure. The thought of a drought in Colorado seems to make AGW advocates delighted.